CEO general managerial skills and corporate social responsibility

This study examines the impact of managerial skill sets on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skill sets through their lifetime work experience (i.e., generalist CEOs) tend to engage in less CSR. This finding remains consistent after considering potential endogenous matching between CEO types and firms, as well as alternative measures of CSR. We further show that the negative relationship between generalist CEOs and CSR becomes more prominent when CEOs are close to the timing of job-hopping, especially for firms with a higher level of institutional ownership and institutional investors who frequently alter their holding positions. These findings are consistent with the argument that CEOs who frequently face the short-term performance pressure from the labor market are reluctant to invest in projects which are likely to generate profits over the long run.